#my favorite patron interactions are usually with younger undergrads who are soooo surprised and excited when I tell them yes we have this

[absolutely-xantastic]

I work in an academic library and sometimes the university stance (you must buy your textbooks) and the library stance (don’t pay for anything ever) are not in communication with each other, which can be very confusing. If you are in college PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to your library!

Library staff (reference in particular) are literally there to help you find resources! Academic databases and websites do not function like google - there is not an underlying learning algorithm that can guess what you want. Academic research is not intuitive - it’s a SKILL that you can learn and library reference staff already have those skills and we WANT to help you get the resources and info you need. Many libraries offer some sort of an ask a librarian service - email and/or live chat (with a real person!) that you CAN and SHOULD use if you are having trouble accessing or finding resources. I PROMISE YOU - no one will laugh or shame you for not knowing how to navigate archaic academic resources. Library database and article access is a complicated beast and you’d be amazed at how many FACULTY don’t know how to properly use the library or are fully aware of what the library can get if you just ask. And the faculty often assume that students have a MUCH HIGHER baseline of what students know how to do with regards to research, and that knowledge gap is only getting bigger (looking at you AI) so PLEASE do not feel bad if you are struggling at research and do not be afraid to ASK FOR HELP.

Even if you think you checked the library website and can’t find access, ask someone. Milage will vary depending on the size of your school but there may be multiple ways to access a single article and odds are you aren’t going to know to check all of them but staff will. And if you truly don’t have access, ask about interlibrary loan. You can request articles as well as physical materials and often those request get filled quickly and at no extra cost to you.

Also - if your professor is requesting specific books for class, ask them about putting a copy on course reserve. A lot of folks don’t know about reserves (faculty included) but academic libraries will put copies of course texts on course reserve, meaning that those books are specifically on hold for use by a class at the instructors request. Reserves often cannot be checked out for very long (ie a few hours) but that is by design - so that if folks for whatever reason cannot get access to a book on their own, there is a library copy that should be more available to them. It’s not a perfect system, and there may be a fight to get the one copy but it’s an attempt to make course materials more equitably accessible (rather than having one library copy of a required text that someone checks out and hogs for the whole semester).

TL;DR - I work in an academic library and staff WANT TO HELP YOU FIND RESOURCES. People don’t know the true extent of how libraries (particularly academic ones) will go above and beyond to ensure you have access to things you need. Dont get discouraged if you can’t access things, no one expects you to know how to do it so ALWAYS ALWAYS ask library staff. I promise we want to help you. It’s literally what we’re here for.

(Not to mention that using library services is the most effective way to ensure that the library can keep providing access and services - we rely a lot on usage statistics so the more you ask for help, the better we can be at actually helping)

Beware!